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Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

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Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#291

Post by tsimionescu »

DrBazza wrote: post #12

I wish these authors would define exactly "which blockchain" they hate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain "A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are securely linked together using cryptography." So, yeah, git and mercurial are "dangerous nonsense". But of course they're really talking about cryptocurrencies and smart contracts, right? So why not put that in the title?

This is a problem of how exactly you define the word "blockchain" - you can meaningfully define it to I either include Git (as the first proposition on Wikipedia does) or to exclude it (e.g. by adding a consensus mechanism to the definition, which excludes Git but keeps Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum PoS etc).

The important thing is that the article is very clearly referencing the concept of a blockchain used as a permission-less DB, which Git clearly isn't. None of the arguments in the article apply to Git, and saying "Well, but Git is a block chain" would not make the article moot - the author at best needs to clarify that they are talking about a blockchain + consensus mechanism.

I'd also note that Git and Hg predate the first use of the term "Block chain" (2011, according to Merriam-Webster) by 6 years, and their design was in turn inspired by even older systems.

The Merkle tree or Hash tree data structure that underlies the design was invented in 1979, and also fits the definition of "block chain" on Wikipedia.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#292

Post by mattdesl »

RandomLensman wrote: post #288
mattdesl wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this has been done many times in a way that solves my original question (decentralized escrow), there should be some concrete examples you can point to besides blockchain/crypto systems.

Obviously, non-digital assets, but does the Hawala system fit your analog version for decentralized escrow? Early stock exchanges were sometimes created to get around existing third parties ("auctioneers") and allow the brokers to directly transact p2p. What about a credit coop (it is central, but it is also owned by all the users)? Edit: at it's most basic, reliable coinage was kind of way to create reliable p2p abi…

Perhaps, but my original question was around digital assets across the internet (and ideally on a global scale). If you are trading a plush toy for a coconut the "atomic swap" could be done with each party's two hands.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#293

Post by tsimionescu »

dbrgn wrote: post #106
mnd999 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people trying to sell private blockchain snake-oil for precisely that purpose. It’s all rubbish, just use a database.

Certificate transparency is a permissioned blockchain (a merkle hash tree), ran by a group of trusted organizations and observed by third party monitors ("validators"). Your browser probably queried that blockchain when you opened hackernews.

It's a Merkle hash tree.

You can call that a blockchain if you want, but we already have a much older and more specific term for it: Merkle hash tree.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#294

Post by Grustaf »

dmitriid wrote: post #285
Grustaf wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also bought property in Sweden, it's very simple. No need to involve a lawyer even. So where do smart contracts come in? Who would want to use a smart contract to buy an apartment? Unless possible the apartment deed was stored on the blockchain or something, but that is highly unlikely. Real estate is a very poor fit, since it's very heavily regulated in numerous ways. It's not just about ownership, and anonymou…

So, you keep coming up with "smart contracts are not a good fit for anything". Which really doesn't invalidate my original point.

I mean I'm not a smart contract evangelist, I'm just replying to your point that they are risky, that you need to understand them before using them. You do, that's why most people shouldn't.

As to use cases, you only proposed two things, coffee and real estate. Those examples are both silly, for different reasons. I think in general it very seldom would make sense to use smart contracts for real assets.

The only real use cases I can think of are financial derivatives with crypto assets as underlying, and various decision making mechanisms that govern processes that are controlled by code. As soon as you need to cross into the physical world, it's hard to see how it would work. Then you need a centralised institution that people trust, which mostly defeats the purpose.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#296

Post by trinovantes »

mattdesl wrote: post #290
trinovantes wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You trust the private companies/individuals making your hardware and protecting your communications but suddenly trusting a private escrow is heresy? Seems like a weird double standard. > record and alter global state without placing it in the control of a single centralized intermediary Paxos solved this in the 90s

A centralized escrow is not heresy; it involves a different set of trade-offs. In some cases the decentralized escrow might be more appealing. To go back to my original example of a domain transfer, the exchange can occur in a matter of seconds or minutes within a blockchain, rather than 1 to 20 business days with escrow.com. Never heard of Paxos, if it could achieve the same problems I've outlined earlier, I'd be cu…

The 20 days delay is a problem with escrow.com specifically. Domain sales are a trivially automated process that should be instant e.g. literally any domain registrar.

Paxos family of algorithms solves distributed state replication. It is the backbone of the database engines that already power most of the internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_(computer_science)

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#297

Post by tsimionescu »

mattdesl wrote: post #212
tsimionescu wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> User A holds digital asset X (such as a valuable domain name "xyz.eth") and User B holds digital asset Y (such as a valuable sum of stablecoin tokens) and these users wish to exchange them in a single public + cryptographically verifiable transaction (i.e. atomic swap), without relying on the trust (and for-profit services) of a third-party escrow agent. OK, how do they do this? Let's say X has 1M gold in World of…

If both assets are defined by the same blockchain protocol, a contract can be written that provides both users the ability to deposit the two assets into it. Only once both assets have been deposited will the atomic swap occur. And at any point before this, a deposit could be safely withdrawn (ie: if other party backs out of deal). Edit: if your question is “how does this technically look in practice”, here is an exa…

You claimed that blockchains solve the problem of atomically transferring digital assets. I gave an example of two digital assets I may like to transfer.

Please tell me how Ethereum solves the problem of exchanging WoW gold for FF14 Gil in a trust less manner.

The problem of transferring digital goods controlled by the same entity in a trust less manner is trivial and solved by many technologies predating Bitcoin. I can already trustlessly sell a piece of copper in World of Warcraft for gold without involving any other third party.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#298

Post by 5h »

jedimind wrote: post #206
5h wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good attempt at a deflection, I won't casually solve the very thing that is a great example of blockchain being a solution looking for a problem. But, given the 'real world' context I tried to stress, do you think blockchain is a good solution to the variations of that problem in real world contexts?

You think that you're onto something but your rhetoric and arguments honestly make me cringe. People are increasingly aware that governments/authorities do not deserve the trust that they have been given + the opaque nature of the system only allows authorities to abuse their power. Thus the technology you love to hate so much does in fact serve "real world" problems and is more trusted, so much so that Ethereum for…

I don't hate blockchain - the technology - it's really interesting.

Something I dislike though is that so many conversations that enquire roughly 'why not use a more traditional technology' end up with rant about not trusting governments - that is 'cringe'.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#299

Post by tsimionescu »

swalsh wrote: post #227
tsimionescu wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that block chains solve this? So, I can buy a car from someone I don't trust by using a blockchain, with no need to rely on courts or other third parties?

A digital car... yeah. The more i've tried to hack with smart contracts for physical stuff, the more I realize that's not what it's good for. But if you stop thinking of the physical world, and only think of the digital world, and you use a modern chain (I use avax). It works pretty good. I think there's a few missing pieces of infrastructure still, but the people who "are in it to build, and not for the money" (I in…

Ok, then how can I buy a World of Warcraft mount from another player I don't trust by using my Final Fantasy 14 money and a block chain?

Or, if that's too silly, how do I buy a .com domain name in exchange for some ETH, assuming neither I nor the seller of the domain name trust each other?

These are all digital goods, so can avax help me do it?

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#300

Post by fleddr »

You know, there's credible and rational claims one can make to justify an overall negative perception of "crypto". To be skeptical of it, at the very least.

It is however concerning how of all people, a computer science student at a technical university is so closed minded, emotional, and primitive in their conclusions.

Blockchains are insecure because I say they are. Scams and stuff. I've Googled for 3 scam cases so it's only scams. Let me link you further into 3 other crypto hate blogs as "research".

Every new crypto project is useless nonsense. I've actually never used a single one of them, don't have any idea what they're about or how any of them works, but they're useless.

It's not that any of these sweeping conclusions are fully false. And with proper research one might come to similar yet probably more nuanced conclusions, the issue is that no case is made at all. It's a narrative with zero substance. If you're going to do that, at least be efficient about it: just write "crypto sucks" as headline and publish.

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